


Special Stage

by nasarose



Category: SHINee, f(x)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 17:46:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasarose/pseuds/nasarose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The romance of a dance comes as much from the dancers as it does the choreography.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Stage

Amber pressed her fingers against her eyes and yawned. It had been a long day, and it was far from over, but she liked to think that she was ready for whatever she was going to have to deal with that night. She pulled her phone from her backpack and checked the time. Nine forty-five. She was early, but the choreographer was known for being ahead of schedule for start times and way behind schedule for end times.

Amber stood and flattened her shirt against her stomach. She linked her hands with interconnected fingers and reached straight above her head. Her shirt rose to just above her belly button, but she continued the stretch by curving her body to one side. A smirk danced on her lips as she rolled to arch her back as though she were dodging bullets from The Matrix and held the position for the strange sense of power it gave her before rolling to the side she had yet to stretch. Amber completed her circle by pressing her hands to the floor, closing her eyes against the close up of her pants. The fabric of her loose t-shirt had worked its way over her waist so the curve of her spine was visible until the jersey of her sports bra got involved.

“You know, f(x) probably shouldn’t perform shirtless before SHINee. Just a thought,” a voice mused as the door swung back into its frame.

Amber’s torso bounced as she laughed at the familiar sound, but before she could straighten to fix her shirt, cold fingertips walked their way along her spine and pulled at her shirt. She stood up as the hem of her shirt met the waistband of her pants.

“Thanks, Key-ssi.”

“No problem, Amber,” Key said in English. He turned slightly, bumped his hip against hers, and smiled when she lost her balance.

“Aish, what are you doing?” she asked.

Key shrugged as he pressed his lips together. “You’re not very graceful for a dancer.”

“She only needs to be graceful when she dances,” a voice of authority said from the door.

“But she should be on her guard at all times, hyung,” Key told the 10-minute early choreographer after bowing deeply in greeting.

Amber took a step behind the man and peeked over his shoulder. “Eunhyuk-oppa, tell him to leave me alone.”

“I can’t do that. You’re about to do a dance together. If he left you alone, it wouldn’t be together; it would be a solo.”

Key froze in the middle of taking off his sweater. “I somehow doubt that’s what she meant, hyung.”

Eunhyuk shrugged and pulled an iPod from some mysterious pocket of his many-layered ensemble. “At any rate, you can’t leave her alone during this performance. You bothering her is kind of the point.”

Amber wrinkled her nose. Key took a step toward her, and they both turned to face the mirror as Eunhyuk prepared the music.

“You have heard the song, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Amber said. “It’s about a lizard chasing after a dinosaur, and in the end, the dinosaur crushes the lizard and walks off alone like a boss.”

Eunhyuk looked up from his iPod, and his eyes darted back and forth as though he was reading something only he could see.

“That isn’t what the song is about,” he said slowly. “It’s about a boy chasing after a girl, and the girl leads him on until the very end when she deserts him.”

Amber shrugged and took a seat next to Key on the floor facing the mirror. “Maybe not outwardly, but as soon as we start performing it, it’s going to be a reptilian overload for fans.”

Key turned to Amber with his face emotionless and his lips held in a straight line. He blinked slowly before saying, “Stop calling me a lizard, dino-girl.”

“Oh, I get it,” Eunhyuk said. He shook his head and pressed play before walking to stand in front of his students for the day.

“Whose part are you doing?” Amber asked as Key continued to glare at her.

“Yours. We only have a few hours to get through this, so if you could please relax your grudge face and pay attention, Kibum-ah, I would be most appreciative.”

Key clicked his tongue and turned to face Eunhyuk who was slowly moving to the opening of the song.

“You’ll be entering during this time. Fans aren’t supposed to know that it’s you two doing this performance until you walk onto the stage.”

“They probably knew before we did,” Amber commented.

“True, but that doesn’t change the choreography,” Eunhyuk retorted.

Amber and Key nodded as they watched Eunhyuk let his body flow through the motions of Amber’s side of the routine. He hadn’t really kept within the limits of her usual concept, and she was almost jumping inside at the challenge she would face to pull this off well enough that netizens wouldn’t attack her thirty seconds after the performance started. When she recognized a move from earlier in the routine, she would try to contort her body into a sitting-version of the movement without drawing too much attention from either man.

“Do you think you can do it?” Eunhyuk huffed. He slid against the mirror to sit down and pushed a few buttons on the stereo remote to queue the song and pause the music.

“That was my part, right?” Key asked.

Eunhyuk mocked throwing the remote at Key’s head so convincingly that Key stood up and ran to the other side of the room before Amber could realize what he had said. When she realized what was going on, she turned to Key and shook her fist at him.

“I somehow doubt this is going to be anything other than an ego fight,” she told him.

He pushed his sleeves so they were resting at his elbows. “I’m armed and ready. Let’s do this.”

Key pulled Amber to stand next to him, and they worked hard as they learned Eunhyuk’s choreography. The story of the song wasn’t literally played out in the moves, but it was present during the bridge and overpowering when Amber was to push Key to the ground, tilt her head to smile not even a centimeter from his face, and turn around to strut offstage.

After the first complete but clumsy run-through, Eunhyuk said it was a good time for a water break, and Key and Amber both fell to lay against the cool wood floor.

“That wasn’t bad,” Eunhyuk said when they sat up again. “You guys have to be closer, though. Just moving your bodies near one another won’t have the same edge as moving against one another.”

Key sighed and looked at Eunhyuk with an overbearingly exhausted expression. “Hyung, we really don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“Fake it,” Eunhyuk shrugged.

The next few times they ran the routine were more awkward than the first as Amber and Key moved around one another in an effort to make the choreography come to life, but Amber just couldn’t seem to get her body to roll in the right way. The music stopped with Key’s hand hovering over Amber’s hip. She could feel the heat of his body on her back, but she couldn’t feel his chest.

“We should go.” Eunhyuk indicated the clock above the door said it was nearly 4am, which was extremely past the time when they were going to leave the rehearsal room originally. “But before I let you guys leave…”

Eunhyuk moved toward the couple and wrapped one hand around Key’s wrist and placed the other between Key’s shoulder blades. He pushed from either side like Key’s body was the bread around a sandwich where Amber was the meat and vegetables. Her lungs emptied at the overwhelming amount of contact that Eunhyuk had just created between her and her senior. Key’s fingertips pressed into her lightly, but her brain was on overdrive deciphering each section of his body that was pressed against her back. Their breathing synchronized quickly so that every time she inhaled and allowed her spine to curve slightly, Key inhaled and filled the space.

“You have to be this close the entire time,” Eunhyuk said to them with a chuckle at the blush that he had created in both their faces.

Amber could feel herself growing weak, but she was convinced that it was due to lack of sleep and had absolutely nothing to with the amount of blood that had left her brain and legs to create that fluttering feeling in her stomach. No connection whatsoever.

Key felt Amber wobbling slightly in his grasp. “Are you okay, Amber-yah?” he asked into her ear.

The heat of his breath on her neck added to everything else that was happening right now was a little bit more than Amber’s mind could handle at such a late hour and after such a long day of work and rehearsal, so she barely managed to bob her head before she squeaked, “I’m just exhausted.”

Key nodded, and his cheek brushed against her hair as his head moved. He took half a step back to wrap his arm around her shoulders.

“We’ll take you home so you can get some rest.”

Eunhyuk gathered his things together and held up a loud bundle of keys. “I’ll drive you both home. It’s my fault you’re here so late.”

Amber nodded and let Key support her as they made their way down to Eunhyuk’s car. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to stand on her own at this point. Hopefully her nerves would calm down in time for her to leave the car and make it up to her dorm.

She slid into the front seat knowing Eunhyuk would drop her at home first to avoid any fans seeing them alone in the car together and trying to start havoc. As the engine started, she leaned her forehead against the door and listened to the hum of Eunhyuk’s voice beside her and Key’s voice from behind her.

“You guys did really well today. Truly. You just need to work on being physically closer before the performance in two weeks.”

“Hyung, we really don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“I don’t really care, Kibum-ah. Like I said: if you have to, fake it. That was the only rehearsal that I’m going to be at until the day before the performance. You guys have the room a few days for the next two weeks, so don’t waste your time.”

Key sighed and nearly threw himself into the seat back in frustration at the news that the chemistry of the dance would have to be developed without the choreographer. When

Eunhyuk planned things like that, he usually had some kind of ulterior motive. Any other time people had been left to work with Eunhyuk once before a performance, he usually encouraged them to let their emotions take them where they felt the dance needed to go and to use his moves as a guide rather than a regiment. Key and Amber weren’t really close in the way this dance required, so Key figured the only thing his emotions would be telling him to do with this dance was to be careful of his distance from the girl. They were close friends, but not much more than that.

“Are you okay to get from here on your own?” Eunhyuk asked as the car stopped in front of the f(x) dorm building.

“Yeah,” Amber nodded. She’d been doing that a lot since the rehearsal ended, but the fact that she was so tired didn’t really leave much else for her body to be capable of doing.

“I texted Tori-unnie to help me get upstairs.”

“You woke Victoria-noona?” Key asked from the backseat.

“Ah, no.” Amber turned slightly to face the boy in the back, but she quickly realized that her blood hadn’t made it properly back to her brain, and looking at him was making her lightheaded way too quickly. “I just texted her thinking she would be awake. She wouldn’t have answered if she were sleeping. She keeps her phone in a different room than where she sleeps so that it won’t wake her.”

Key marveled at the simplicity of that brilliant idea for a moment before he saw Victoria walking out to the car to collect Amber.

“I’ll see you, Kibum-ssi. Thank you for your patience and for the ride Eunhyuk-oppa. I’ll see you.”

She nearly rolled out of the car and into Victoria’s outstretched arms as soon as she opened her door. Key heard Victoria coo to Amber about needing to take better care of her body before the door closed and the two girls walked toward the building. He scrambled to the front seat and nodded to Eunhyuk when he was settled enough to leave.

* * * * *

The solo rehearsals went awkwardly without someone to tell them what they were doing right and when they were going wrong. They took everything very seriously, but Amber was afraid that seriously and emotionally were completely different things when it came to performing, and they seemed to be missing the more important of those two things.

The day they were expecting to see Eunhyuk again came more quickly than they were comfortable admitting. They ran the routine into the ground over the previous week and a half, but nothing seemed to fall into place for them. Amber sat with her legs out to her sides stretching while Key walked through his choreography and lyrics to the instrumental version of the song.

“Hey.”

Both of them turned their heads when they heard the voice that meant they hadn’t heard the door open.

“Welcome to the torture den,” Key said with a flourish. He held his hands out wide to indicate the airy room with the wall of summer sky.

“It can’t possibly be that bad,” Eunhyuk sighed as he took a seat next to the stereo.

“It’s not, but it’s close,” Amber told him. She stood and adjusted her clothes in preparation for the run of the song.

“Are you ready?” Eunhyuk asked them.

Amber looked up from the floor for a brief moment and caught Key staring at her intently, but he seemed to be glancing below her eyes. She looked down to notice that in adjusting her jeans, her shirt had snagged on the elastic of her bra and was hanging to show most of her stomach. Key reached out and fumbled with the fabric for a moment to right her shirt, and she just watched him pull her shirt into place, feeling him run his fingertips along the skin of her side as the fabric moved where gravity wanted it to go. She lost the ability to breathe as she tried to collect just exactly what thoughts were supposed to be going through her head at this moment until she heard Eunhyuk laughing breathily into his hand.

“It seems like you two are closer. This should be fun to watch.”

Amber blinked back into composure as the song started and Key pulled her to the side of the room that represented the side of the stage where they would be waiting to enter.

He seemed to be breathing differently, but it wasn’t clear if he was nervous about being in front of Eunhyuk or what just past between him and her.

As soon as they started to step to the music, the air in the room seemed to shift. The fact that the air conditioner had just switched on had nothing to do with the way the mood was changing, but whatever change was happening was just making it harder for either dancer to ignore the sudden tightness in their chests and focus on their movements.

Every touch was suddenly a lot more awkward than it had been the day before. Eunhyuk stopped the music after a minute of neither person singing. Their minds were so focused on how to react to one another that they were unable to multi-task.

“You guys have to sing the words now. You aren’t using the track with lyrics tomorrow night.”

Key reached back and ran his nails along his scalp lightly. Amber chewed on her cheek before bowing slightly.

“I think we’ve been practicing too hard, Eunhyuk-oppa. Maybe it will just come together tomorrow.”

She crossed her ankles and lowered herself onto the ground, resting her elbows on her knees and her forehead on the heels of her hands.

Eunhyk sighed and moved to the middle of the room. “You guys aren’t really doing better than you were two weeks ago, though. The distance between you is physically smaller, but every movement is awkward.”

“Sorry hyung.”

“Don’t be sorry. Do something to change it. You need to free up this room for a different rehearsal, but I expect you to meet early tomorrow to do some last minute practice.”

Key and Amber nodded. They both knew that Eunhyuk had cleared their schedules for the day, and they both knew he’d done that in case this very thing happened and they needed to spend the day working.

They left the room after the unsuccessful rehearsal with their heads rolled forward on their necks. As they walked down to the first floor lobby, Key would steal glances at Amber to check that she was okay with what had just happened, but he couldn’t read her face as she stared down to the hand she had resting on her stomach. Krystal ran up to Amber and began to pull her to where the other members of her group were waiting, but Amber barely looked up to take notice of where she was headed.

“I’ll, uh, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Key said to Amber’s back.

She lifted her hand to wave, but she didn’t even have time to look over her shoulder before she was pulled into a room and the door was shut.

* * * * *

Sleep was a luxury in both dorms the night before the performance due to schedules late in the night, but Key and Amber took advantage of their free day to sleep later than the rest of their members. At exactly 1:14pm, both their phones went off and woke them.

“Get out of bed and get to the rehearsal room right now. I didn’t clear your schedules so you could sleep the entire day away.”

They grumbled and got ready to go to the rehearsal room. From completely different areas of the Han, two people were going through nearly the exact same motions with nearly the exact same frustrations (Key’s sexual frustration was something Amber was luckily avoiding, but her hair was sticking up in ways that she didn’t understand).

Amber’s phone buzzed against the kitchen counter as she pulled an orange from the back of her drawer in the fridge.

“My manager will drive us. I have breakfast, so be down in about 5 minutes, okay?”

She nodded at her phone and stuck it in her pocket to grab her things. It wasn’t until four and a half minutes after she had received Key’s text that she realized that nodding to her phone did not mean that he knew she was going to be down there. Amber punched his number into her phone and started to run frantically to the elevator that always moved too slowly when she really needed it to be waiting for her when she left the room.

“Hello?”

Key listened as a door slammed before a voice bounced through his speaker.

“Hey, Kibum-ssi, I got your text, and I’m on my way down,” Amber panted as she took the stairs two-at-a-time.

Key chuckled as he realized what she was doing to make sure they didn’t have to wait for her. “You can take your time,” he teased. “You need your energy for the performance on the stage, not your ability to scale down 16 flights of stairs.”

“Excuse me,” she said defensively, “but my ability to go down stairs is nothing to joke about. I could win Korea a gold medal if this was an Olympic sport.”

“Except for the fact that you aren’t Korean.”

Amber stopped on the landing to the sixth floor to consider what Key had just said. “Well, yeah, there’s that. Okay, I could steal the gold medal from Korea for America if this were an Olympic sport.”

Amber could barely hear Key’s booming laugh over the stomp of her sneakers on the steps as she took them three- and four-at-a-time to make up for the time she lost for realizing her own citizenship. She made it to the front door of her building just as she noticed the SHINee van pulling up in front of the steps. She rushed out to the edge of where the stairs started, took a leap over the four steps to the sidewalk, and stuck her landing ala Shawn Johnson.

“What’s the verdict, judge?” she asked as he hands hung above her head.

Key considered the valiant effort Amber had put forth carefully before reaching a decision. “Eight point five.”

“Blasphemy! Are you sure you aren’t the Russian judge?”

“Nine point eight,” Key’s manager says from the driver’s seat. “I heard you pause part way. Full points are only granted for a non-stop performance regardless if you make up the time.”

Amber nodded at the fair score from the manager and slid the door open to climb into the back of the van.

Key twisted his body to look back at her. “You should have been waiting for us downstairs when we got here.”

“But then you wouldn’t have seen me stick my landing,” Amber protested through heavy breaths. “You were late, anyway.”

“We were giving you a bigger window of time,” Key said confidently.

Amber rolled her eyes and slumped against the bench seat. “Whatever you say, I’m still awesome for making it down that fast,” she said more to herself than Key.

“Here.” Key handed Amber a container with three compartments and condensation and a pair of chopsticks. “I don’t know when we’ll have time to eat, so you should finish that before we get to the studio.”

“Thank you. This looks really ridiculously good, oppa. Did you make this before you came over?”

“Not technically. We always have rice, so I just put that in the container with some sides. I hope it’s okay.”

“It’s better than okay,” Amber said through a mouthful of hardboiled egg and rice. “I was just going to have an orange.” She swallowed. “This is amazing.”

Key turned to face the windshield and smiled to himself. “I’m glad I saved you from such a lack luster meal, then.”

She put the container on her lap and rested the chopsticks in a groove so they wouldn’t roll away from her. After rifling through her bag for a moment, she pulled out a clear plastic bag.

“I brought some fruit anyway if you want some,” she told Key as she held the bag up in front of her face.

“I’m okay for now, thanks, but you should hurry up and eat. We’re nearly there.”

Amber handed the bag of fruit to Key so the apples wouldn’t bruise and busied herself with her breakfast.

As they pulled in front of the studio, Amber clicked the top back onto the container and looked up at Key.

“I ate well,” she told him, “but what do I do with this now?”

The manager reached his hand between the seats. “I’ll take it. No need for either of you to carry around a dirty container.”

“Thank you, oppa,” Amber said as she handed him the container and grabbed her bag. “Thank you for the ride, too. My manager left with the other members this morning while I was still sleeping.”

“It’s no problem. Get inside to practice. Do your best tonight.”

The two nodded as they left the van, and they turned to wave at the manager as he drove off to do whatever it was that managers do when they’ve deposited their charges at the proper locations.

“Come on,” Key said taking Amber’s hand.

She could feel the blood rush to her face as he wrapped his fingers around her own, but she wasn’t going to challenge what he was doing partly because he was older than her and partly because the amount of blood in her cheeks was really affecting the amount of blood in her brain.

They greeted the people at the front desk briefly as they ran through the lobby to get to the rehearsal room. Amber squatted just inside the door and started panting as Key closed them into the room.

“Eunhyuk-oppa won’t even be here to watch us. Why were you in such a rush?”

Key shrugged as he placed his bag on a chair and started to look for the CD with the song.

“I don’t know. It seemed more exciting.”

Amber sighed and let her body fall against the wall. She watched Key take off his loose sweater to reveal a black v-neck. The shirt had a mind of its own as he started to stretch, and Amber couldn’t help but think that every fangirl in history would rip her to shreds for the view of Key’s body she was currently privy to.

“Are you limber?” he asked from across the room.

“Yeah. I stretched before my Olympic run,” she told him.

Key walked over to her and held out his hands. She reached up, grabbed his palms, and let him pull her to stand in front of him.

“Well then, let’s do this.”

They worked through the dance with their bodies closer than before, but Amber could still sense there was something missing. She tried to take some risks, but everything felt awkward. The third time they went through the motions, when the point came that Key was pushed against her back and his fingers were pressing into her hip, she grabbed his hand and slipped it onto her thigh. Everything in the room except the music stopped at that moment. It took a while for Key to understand what was happening, but he didn’t waste any more time before dropping his chin against the side of Amber’s neck and wrapping his other arm around her waist. She reached back and ran her fingers through his hair before pulling his face against her own. They stood with their lips pressed together until Key tugged at Amber to turn her around. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled away from his face.

“We should maybe not add that to the dance.”

Key rested his forehead against Amber’s cheek and breathed into her ear, “Probably a good idea.”

He moved his hands over her sides and pulled her flush against his body. She hummed against Key’s neck as his fingers moved up the back of her shirt. He pressed his hands flat against her back and continued to run them over the skin of her back and stomach until they were resting on the fabric of her bra under her armpits. Amber could barely move her hands down Key’s arms before every feeling was so good that she froze against him with her nose pressed in the space between his collarbones.

“You’re eager,” she said into his shirt.

“You have no idea how much I’m controlling myself,” he said easily. “This is a wet dream come true.”

Amber laughed against Key’s chest until he pressed his thumbs into her breasts and started to massage them. Her head rolled back of its own accord as a moan flowed from her throat. Key pressed his mouth against Amber’s exposed neck and alternated between kissing and sucking lightly while his hands continued to work at her chest. At this point, Amber could not be held accountable for the sounds coming from her body. Key pulled away from Amber and looked at the stereo.

“What?” Amber asked breathlessly. She hurried to pull her shirt back down over her chest.

“The music stopped, and I remembered what we were supposed to be doing,” Key told her as he pointed to the silent stereo.

“Oh, um, right,” Amber said. She glanced at the door and a small smile appeared on her lips. “At least we’re in a room with no windows to the hallway.”

Key pulled at her belt loops to bring her closer and leaned in for the kiss.

“Strategic planning considering this is supposed to be a secret stage,” he told her before sucking her bottom lip into his mouth.

Amber pressed her tongue against Key’s lips and ran her hands over his back when he opened his mouth to her. Their hands explored each other’s bodies for a few minutes while their tongues worked inside their mouths. Amber pulled away first and tried to catch her breath as Key moved down to slide his tongue along her neck.

“We really should practice,” she struggled to say.

Key nodded against her neck and kissed behind her ear. “You’re right. We never know when hyung will come in to check on us, and we have little over an hour left to get this.”  
Amber checked the clock, and sure enough, they had an hour and ten minutes before they needed to start getting ready. Key walked to the stereo and started the music again, and suddenly, everything fell into place. His hands roamed her body more, and her body flowed more fluidly, and every time their eyes met, there was a spark that made the lyrics stick in their throats. Amber took the final move a bit further by brushing her nose against Key’s with a wide smile on her face before turning and swaying her hips offstage. The second time she did this to him, he reached out and grabbed her wrist as she turned and pulled her on top of him.

“You can’t do this when we’re onstage, you realize,” Amber told him.

“So you’re telling me to get my fill now?”

A calculating smile formed on Key’s face as his hands gripped Amber’s ass. He pulled her hips hard against his and rolled into her. He grunted as Amber pushed her thigh between his legs and dug her nails into his back. She leaned down and kissed the stretch of his chest that was showing from his v-neck.

“One more time,” she said against his neck, “and then I have to go get ready.”

She pushed her palms against his perked nipples and used his chest as leverage to stand. She pulled him up, and he ran his hands over her arms. Amber couldn’t look at him as her face flushed and a smile broke across her lips.

“I’m glad this feeling is mutual,” Key said, allowing his hand to play with the button on her jeans before pressing play for the song to start again.

They went through this time with every emotion they were missing initially but with less of the sexual tension they’d developed in the afternoon rehearsal. As the music faded, someone walked in cheering.

“You finally got it! I don’t know how you managed to get it that right, but whatever you did, keep doing it forever, okay? It was perfect!” Eunhyuk came in and clapped them both on the back happily. “Amber, you should hurry and get ready. F(x) goes on in half an hour.”

Amber nodded at Eunhyuk and smiled knowingly at Key before running out of the room with her bag.

“So how did you do that?” Eunhyuk asked as Key gathered his things to go to his own dressing room.

“I’m not sure. Something just clicked into place, I guess,” Key said as he moved his bag to cover the not-so-subtly straining fabric at his crotch.

* * * * *

As the time for the special stage approached, Key went to find Amber to pull her backstage to stand with him. He wanted to make sure they had time to watch some of the act before theirs because he knew that watching others always calmed Amber before going onstage.

He knocked on the f(x) dressing room door before opening it and peeking inside.

“Is Amber-yah here?” he asked Krystal.

“Uh, not at the moment. She’ll be back soon, though. She had to go greet Nichkhun-ssi for a spot on We Got Married. You can wait for her here if you want.”

Key considered his options and shook his head. “I’ll just go find her. We go on in a few minutes.”

“You want to make sure she gets to see the stage before yours?” Krystal asked.

“Yeah. I’ll see you.”

Krystal’s smile was wide as she realized what had finally passed between the two as she watched Key run frantically down the hall. “Key-oppa fighting!” she yelled when she stood to close the door that he had left open in his rush to find Amber.

It didn’t take long for Key to locate Amber considering he knew where 2pm’s dressing room was in the maze of idols. The door was open, and members of the group were walking in and out awkwardly, all of them waiting to be able to relax in their dressing room without the buzz of cameras.

“Woo Young-hyung,” Key said as he bowed slightly. “Is Amber-yah still in there?

Woo Young nodded. “She should be done soon, though. Why?”

“We’re the next stage.”

Woo Young’s eyes went wide, and he guided Key into the room and cleared his throat. Victoria and Nichkhun turned to look at them while Amber lifted her chin in greeting.

“Uh, Nichkhun-hyung, I need to take Amber. We have to perform in a few minutes.”

“Oh, okay,” Nichkhun responded with a smile. “Amber fighting!” Both Victoria and Nichkhun held up their fists in support of Amber as she walked over to Key.

As soon as they were out of the dressing room and away from the cameras, Key grabbed Amber’s hand and ran down the hallway toward the stage. They didn’t have much time left to watch the stage before theirs, and Key could fell Amber begin to shake in his hand. He pushed her forward so she could see the stage more clearly and so he was standing behind her.

“It’ll be fine. It’ll be better than fine. It’s going to be amazing,” he said into her hair as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. He stroked the smooth fabric of her costume and pressed his lips against the back of her neck.

Amber lifted her hands and laced her fingers around Key’s. She turned her head to speak to him, but he took it as an invitation to kiss her, not that she particularly minded that idea either. When he pulled away from her, she took a moment to catch her breath and turn to face him.

“Why were the last two weeks so awkward and today has been so completely not anything like awkward?” She had wondered this since his reaction to her moving his hand to her thigh was to give her a back hug, but with everything that had been happening in that room, it was easier just to keep working than to take the time to ask.

Key let his hands fall to her side and grab her hands. “I was controlling myself around you. I know I use skinship with everyone, but I learned that from Jjong. It was hard for me to be that close to you until you gave me that invitation earlier this afternoon.” He paused and looked past her to the stage. “Our music just started.”

Amber nodded as her eyes clouded from the confession Key made. She took a deep breath and walked onto the stage to start the performance. Even with her entire body in a haze, the number of times they had rehearsed the song gave her enough muscle memory that she had probably been performing in her sleep the night before. The noise was near-deafening once she stepped out, but it seemed the building would crack at the seams when Key stepped out onto the stage. The audience made the walls shake as soon as Key reached around Amber’s waist and rested his palm on her stomach.

“I guess netizens won’t mind my performance; they’ll just mind that Key was all over me,” Amber thought as she rolled against Key.

They moved through the routine with a heightened sense of how much their bodies were in contact. Neither one of them went very much time without looking at the other person onstage, so their ears eventually went deaf to any kind of noise coming from the crowd. Amber rolled her hips against Key’s in a way that she hadn’t done in any of their rehearsals, and she smiled to hear the end of his lyric cut short in reaction. Every chance either one of them got to make the dance more intimate without making the fans suspicious was taken with reckless abandon. Key’s hands explored Amber’s body more than Eunhyuk had ever assigned, and Amber teased Key by pressing against him more than would otherwise be necessary. At one point, she noticed something very pronounced press into her back. She cast it off as something to be dealt with later, and it was something she definitely wanted to deal with later.

When she closed in on Key’s face in the final move before the end of the song, she took a risk and ran her hand along the thigh the audience could see before she turned and walked off. Just before she got backstage, she turned and wiggled her fingers at Key teasingly. He turned to the fans and shrugged before jumping up and running after Amber, something that worked to his advantage both in the fiction of the performance and the fact of his desires.

He stumbled past people standing backstage to get his body mic back to the tech as fast as possible so he could find Amber before she got too far. Luckily, he was well-versed in speedy mic-removal, so his stop to drop off the mic took very little time off his race to the girl.

Amber, for all her talents, had made it back into the hallway of dressing rooms in record time and ran into a room she knew to be empty for the day. She stood peeking from the door, ready to grab Key when he finally made it so far into the building. Her fingers began to tingle in anticipation when she heard the echo of his running footsteps coming down the hall. Just as he was about to run past the room, Amber reached out and wrapped her fingers around his wrist, pulling him against her. Key turned the tides and slammed Amber against the door, one hand locking the door while the other wrapped around her hair as he kissed her sloppily.

“That was mean what you were doing out there,” Key growled into her ear.

Amber nipped around Key’s earrings before breathing, “You weren’t so nice yourself with the way you were working your hands.”

Key moved his hands and grabbed Amber’s chest roughly while he ground his hips against her. Amber choked on a moan and dug her nails into Key’s hips, pulling him against her. He slid his hands over his shoulders and pushed her vest to the ground. His hands kept moving to cup her ass and lift her onto his hips. Amber took the hint wrap her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck forcing him to bury his face in her chest. Key slipped his hands under her shirt and turned around to walk them to the couch in the room. They both fell as he laid her against the cushions, pushing her shirt over her head and onto the floor.

“I’ll show you what my hands can really do.”

Key raked his fingers along Amber’s torso and smiled as the goosebumps formed and her breathing shook. He leaned down to kiss her sternum to distract from the fact that he was unbuttoning her jeans. Amber’s hips thrust into him when he slipped nimble fingers into her underwear.

“Oh my gosh, why?” she panted as he drummed his fingers against her.

Key smiled against her neck. “How long have you been this hot?”

He rubbed her moist skin between his fingers and pulled at it.

“I, uh, since we were on, ah, since we stepped, mmm, onstage,” she groaned.

She moved her hands toward the tops of jeans in an effort to wiggle out of them, but Key wrapped his free hand around both her wrists and threw her hands about her head.

“No,” he whispered. “I’ll do that when I’m ready.” He ran his tongue along her earlobe. “How could you stand being this way for so long?”

Amber pushed her hips into Key’s hand in an effort to make him move faster. She wrenched one hand free from Key’s grip and whipped it onto Key’s crotch.

“You’re one to talk,” she said, eyes rolling back into her head.

Key grunted as Amber rubbed at him through his jeans. She used the zipper to create a different kind of friction. He yanked her hand away from his bulge to hold her hand above her head. He brushed his lips from the top of the cup of her bra to her bottom lip.

“Keep your hands up there, please.”

Amber nodded and left her hands hanging over the arm of the couch. She gasped when she felt a finger enter her briefly. Key removed his hand from her jeans and slipped his finger into his mouth. He leaned down and pushed his tongue into Amber’s mouth, flipping it against her tongue and teeth like a warning. He smiled against her lips when she hummed into his mouth. Key sat up and ran his hands over Amber’s torso to hook his fingers under waist of her jeans. He repositioned himself at the end of the couch and began to pull.

“Lift.”

Amber pushed her hips into the air to give Key an easier time at pulling the skin-tight pants away from her skin. Once the obstruction was gone, Key ran his hands over the entire length of her legs. His palms pressed against the insides of her thighs to force them apart. He bit at the crease at the top of her leg and kissed her shining skin.

“What are to, oh my gosh, doing down there?” Amber asked as she resisted the urge to grab Key by the hair.

Rather than answering, he licked the length of her folds with a slurp that would have disgusted Amber to no end if she hadn’t been so turned on. She rolled her head against the arm of the couch and wrapped her legs around Key’s shoulders, forcing him against her. He slid his hands along the insides of her thighs until his thumbs could rub the crease at the top. He let his tongue work alone until Amber stretched her legs over the edge of the couch, stretching her entire body to its full length. Choked moans vibrated the air above Key’s head. Amber moved her hands from above her head to press over her mouth. Key rolled his eyes up to look at the damage he was causing, and he quickly began to knit his brows when he noticed the fingerprints forming along her jaw line. He hummed disapprovingly against her clit and slapped her hands away from her mouth. He pulled back when she looked down at him.

“It’s encouraging to hear it.” He took a breath and licked. “Sing out.”

Amber breaths sounded more like huffs when she said, “I’m a rapper.”

She felt a shiver run up her spine and make her scalp tingle when he laughed between her legs. She ran her hands through her hair and tightened her fingers into fists around the roots while a groan rumbled in her throat. Amber’s chin dropped and her head rolled back when Key forced two fingers into her. He began to move them back and forth, spreading them as he moved in and curling as he moved out. His lips closed around her labia so he could begin to suck in time to his finger fucking. High-pitched, breathy cries filled the air when Key pushed in a third finger, Amber’s mouth never closing as she tried to find a release for anything she could pinpoint enough to feel. The muscles of her stomach and lower back began to work against one another as they twitched quickly, causing her to buzz against Key’s lips. She unlinked her hands and reached for Key. She took fist-fulls of his t-shirt and yanked him on top of her, unintentionally shoving his fingers deeper, which forced her to let out a long, loud, shaky moan.

“Be up here,” she said into his neck.

With his free hand, Key grabbed Amber’s hair and pulled her head back to expose her neck. He ran the tip of his tongue the length of her throat starting between her collarbones, making it difficult for her to swallow. He sucked her bottom lip between his teeth and wriggled his fingers inside her. She squirmed beneath him and pulled at the sleeves of his shirt to try to get it off.

Key sat up, dislodged his hand, and looked down at Amber’s pleading face. “Okay, okay.” He ran his shining digits along her stomach before pulling off his shirt and throwing it at the door. “Better?”

Amber simultaneously pressed her thigh against Key’s throbbing erection, which was still held behind his zipper, sat up, and pulled Key into a messy kiss. She ended up with her tongue all over Key’s chin and jaw as he shifted in reaction her leg playing with him. She ran the backs of her nails over his chest, watching as his head faced the wall behind him. When she felt fabric on her fingertips, she bypassed the button to instead shove her hands under the layers of fabric separating her from what Key was hiding. When Amber wrapped her fingers around Key, he fell back with a sharp intake of breath.

“Holy shit, Amber,” he said as his diaphragm convulsed. With two quick, one-handed movements, Key’s jeans were open. “Let me get these off before yo—“

With the newfound freedom of zipper-less teasing, Amber had quickly run her hand the entire length of Key’s member. He lost his senses as she pulled him from his waistband and reached underneath to grab his balls.

“What was that?” she asked with relatively good control of her faculties considering the tizzy her body was still in.

Key was arching his back and digging into her thighs as he rolled his hips. “Pants. Off. Now.”

Amber let a laugh escape her lips as she gripped the sides of Key’s jeans and pulled. Anxious to get the order over with, Key rolled off the couch and stood up, struggling against the lack of control he had over his knees, to rip his jeans off his body. Before he could get back on the couch, Amber threw her legs in front of the couch so she was sitting in front of Key, and she ran her tongue from his base to the tip of his head. He shuddered as she sucked on his head, rolling her tongue over it like a lollipop. She kept sucking lightly as she pulled him from her mouth causing a quiet pop when she finally looked up to look at him.

“No ‘You are my lollipop oh lollipop oh lollipop oh!’ jokes,” he said seriously. “This really isn’t time for jokes.”

He pushed her shoulders against the sofa and climbed on top of her. Amber wrapped her legs around Key’s waist and pulled at him until his erection was pressing at her opening. He leaned into her and kissed her temple as he thrust inside. She tensed as she pulled away from him, gasping for air.

“Okay?”

She bit her lip and nodded slightly. “Yeah. Move.”

Key slowly pulled back. He watched Amber’s face in an effort to gauge what was going through her mind. Her eyes were closed tight, and her breathing was uneven as he pushed himself back inside. When he was about halfway back the second time, he swiveled his hips. Amber’s eyes shot wide open as she gripped Key’s elbows.

“Fuck.”

“There?”

“Dear God, yes there.”

Key nodded as he rolled against her. It was obvious that the initial pain has subsided from the way Amber’s irises had disappeared and all he could see was the whites of her eyes. She moaned as she began to press her hips against him, pushing him in farther than he thought possible. With the added wetness from the teasing, Key could feel a piece of Amber seeping past him with every thrust. He craned his neck to suck at her collarbones as she reached between their bodies to take hold of his balls. The sudden movement caused Key to move fast and forward into her, something she was not at all opposed to. Every time he pushed inside, she ran her fingertips along his scrotum. She watched carefully as his face disfigured with pleasure.

“Shit,” he said into her bra.

“Close?”

“Now.”

Key came in an explosion that rocked Amber’s body to climax. They continued to move against one another for nearly a minute as everything they had mixed between them. Exhausted from the long-awaited release, Key slumped against Amber before rolling to the floor in lieu of pulling out normally.

Amber lay with her hand hanging over the side of the couch holding Key’s hand while he stared at the ceiling for nearly 10 minutes before the music started.

“That isn’t my ringtone,” she said, turning her head in a mock effort to face the boy on the ground beside her.

“Right,” he said. “It’s hyung.”

Key pulled his jeans toward him and took the cell phone from his front pocket. After fumbling a few times, he finally clicked the green button.

“Hyung.”

Key’s speakers were loud enough that Eunhyuk’s voice filled the small room even without being on speakerphone.

“Where are you two? I’ve been looking everywhere.” Key shot upright and turned to the door.

“We, uh, we…”

“I’m with the rest of SHINee and f(x). We’re waiting for you two to show up so we can celebrate how good that stage was. Where did you guys pull that emotion from? It was incredible.”

Key looked at Amber as she listened to their choreographer’s praise.

“Oh, you know how these things go. They get better with time.”

“That wasn’t just better with time, Kibum-ah. That was raw emotion,” Eunhyuk said excitedly.

Key smiled and took a breath to calm his nerves. “Amber and I just had a quick celebration for ourselves.” Amber snorted at the euphemism. “We’ll be there soon.” Key threw Amber’s shirt at her as he hung up the phone.

“That was anything but quick,” she said as she pulled the shirt over her head.

Key ran a hand over her stomach and kissed the space behind her ear.

“We could have a quick celebration now, if you like,” he said playfully.


End file.
